Act!

Early one April Saturday morning, a day to which this whole narrative is devoted, a woman named Manager, who at twenty-three was little more than a child, unlocked the left heavy steel door at the rear of her community hall and went inside. She was now in the back hallway, and she shivered, because the place was too large to heat in any systematic way, and besides this hallway was little more than a fire exit at the rear of the stage, and thus it had no radiators in it. She went down the hallway and opened the door to the rear of the theatre stage, in which there was a bit more warmth, but not much more. It was nine, she guessed, and the crew call was for nine-thirty. She had a half-hour in which to do something, so she decided she'd start building a four-by-eight flat, since they'd accidentally broken one on the previous night, and the inventory had to be replenished by contract.

From their lumber bin she carried two long 1x3s to centre stage. The incomplete set surrounding her was of a living room, or it was called something else. Setting room? Sitting room? It was something like that, and though she could have consulted her marked-up script to find out, she didn't bother. It was a room in which the action, and the murder, would take place, five nights in a row from Wednesday April 18th to Saturday April 22nd. A big fake window with no glass in it is to the back of the stage, and to the left of the fake window are some French doors; further along, a door that looks like it leads down into a cellar, and then another door: or doorframe, rather, since the door hasn't been hung yet; on the other side, to the right of the fake window, is a fake fireplace, and past it there is another door, allegedly to the kitchen. Manager then realized she had confused left and right, and that she'd been thinking in the present tense. She considered going back and revising her description, but decided otherwise.

She took the 1x3s and placed them into a tidy t, with the horizontal piece flush with the top of the vertical piece. With her thumbnail she made a little notch on the bottom piece where the top piece ended, moved away the top piece, and picked up the bottom piece and set it over a couple chairs. With a smaller piece of wood, she thumbnailed a diagonal line from the notch to the nearby opposite corner. Then she took up a saw and sawed through the thumb-nail-line, thereby making a perfect 45° angle at the top. It was the easiest way to do it, and it was geometrically foolproof. It is the truth of the wood, you see, there was no mistake about it. She was sure Boyfriend would be showing up first. He liked being with her, and it wasn't just because of the you-know-whats. He seemed to genuinely like her, and not just want the you-know-whats.

Manager's ears alerted her to the fact that the back door had opened and that someone was coming into the community theatre. Could it be Boyfriend? No, it wasn't; it was Setbuilder, dressed in jeans (as Manager was), a plaid shirt (as Manager wore), a winter coat (as Manager had been wearing until she'd taken it off), and dark sunglasses (which Manager wasn't wearing nor possessed). Setbuilder said: "I had a rough night, forgive me in advance." She was slated to play the suspicious foreign ingenue, and she liked the carpentry behind-the-scenes.

Manager replied: "You didn't have to come in if you're feeling so poorly."

Setbuilder dropped into a chair, saying: "I took some pills, and the show must go on. I'm ready for anything. New flat? Very nice. You do those corners so well."

Without looking up, Manager replied: "I use their own aspects to get it perfect. Nothing beats the essentials, you know."

"So I've heard. Uhg, I wound up at the Basement last night. I don't know how I got there, but there I was. I think I won several games of pool. I'm here now because I wanted to see if I had survived. Did I survive?"

"It looks like you survived."

"A lot of the time it's tough to tell. Maybe I'm still caught up in some dream. Maybe I started dreaming this all on Wednesday. Sometimes, dreams can last a very long time. Once, I spent a whole week in dreamland. Nothing interesting happened, but I was there for a whole week."

"Something interesting must have happened!"

"Nope. I think I was asleep through the whole thing." Setbuilder gestured stage right, to the big rectangular hole, and said, referring to the object intended to fill it: "I think I'm going to finish that door. Maybe we can hang it later today."

Manager continued for twenty minutes or so building the frame and then covering it with raw cotton fabric, stapling all around on the inner surface and using diluted white glue for extra security. Flats are building blocks. They're flimsy, and that's why the Three Stooges never succeeded on Broadway. (Curly would always be knocking the set around, making it vibrate, and the audience refused to laugh in the proper places. Then, a big break made the three of them [along with their mercurial manager, who was a Bulgarian chap nicknamed 'Clams'] re-locate to Hollywood, California to become the constellation they are best remembered for being to this very day.) The standard height of a flat is twelve feet for the classier, more serious plays, and ten or eight feet for the lighter fare. Manager had read all that in the library.

Time had passed, but still there was no sign of Boyfriend. He'd said he'd be there early, possibly earlier even than Manager, even though he didn't have a key to the place, to wait for her arrival near the exit, so they could go in together, and maybe share a little kiss or something. (They were discreet about the relationship, even though everyone knew all about it.)

From nowhere, from nothingness, or perhaps lowered from the fly gallery high overhead by a wire contraption, came a voice, and the voice said: "Morning, Manager!"

Manager looked up and say who it was, and it was Lighting, the star of the shop class and the electricity lab. He could wire up anything, and he was the main genius behind the little pyrotechnics—there was never enough pyro, according to Lighting—that they were going to be using in the production. (Two guns had to fire, and a lightning storm had to extinguish all the stage lighting at the end of the second act.) And here he was on a Saturday morning, ready to work on the lighting. "I have some fresnels to get working properly. I sense they will overheat in a short period of time if I don't adjust their wattages. It's good to keep them well-maintained, because we can't afford to pay for replacements."

Manager nodded. "You're your own boss, Lighting, in the electricals. If you say it has to be done, it has to be done."

Lighting was wearing a white t-shirt torn or worn a little around the collar, corduroys, and tennis shoes. He wasn't wearing a winter coat, which seemed to indicate he'd been in the auditorium for some time. "What time did you get here?"

Lighting replied: "Just now, about nine."

So he's been here all this time, thought Manager. He must have come in right after me. "It's just you and me and Setbuilder so far."

Lighting clapped lightly. He had a thing for Setbuilder. "Setbuilder's here? Where is she?"

"I think she's in the shop room working on the door."

"Ah!" Then he thought for a bit. "Do you think we'll have everything done in time?"

"We have ten days or something. It's down to the crunch, but I think we'll have everything mostly ready." (Little does she know!)

He asked: "Have you read the play, by any chance?"

"No, actually. I get the idea it's something of a farce."

"No, it can't be a farce. You can't have people murdered in a farce."

"Black comedy, then? It could be a black comedy."

Lighting looked around the set to see if it had potential for black comedy. The setting looked very cheap indeed, what with how unpainted it all was, in its trimlessness and its sawdust. He wondered if it was a good time to simply stop building the set. They could leave it just as it was. The performance would naturally change but it could easily be a change for the better. Once movies started being made, one reason among many as to why they looked like stage plays was because that was the structure in which, according to the spectators, drama could take place. Sets were used as backdrops and little else, until a grammar of cinema was developed. Later technological developments made sets themselves optional, the most interesting of which was Greed.

He said: "I can't remember what I was going to do."

Manager replied: "You mentioned something about fresnels."

"Ah! Right! Something has to be fixed, and I think I know where it is." He climbed the ladder up into the fly pit, then climbed into the rafters, walked across the walkway, and went into the lighting booth, all in what seemed like a split-second. He appeared to have forgotten all about his heart-rending crush on Setbuilder.

As Manager mixed, for sizing as it's called, glue with warm water, using a pail and a paint stick, more sounds told her of the approach of another, or two, or one, and it turned out to be of two. The romantic leads, Girl and Boy, had arrived, neither of whom had informed anyone of their intentions. Manager, as she watched them come near acting as if they were strangers to one another barely met, supplied her own narrative. They were going to rehearse a scene, and they had nowhere to go to rehearse it. So, they were simply going to find a place, maybe in one of the dressing rooms, where they wouldn't be too disturbed.

Boy, now within conversation distance, said: "We're here to rehearse a scene."

Girl added: "We have nowhere else to rehearse it."

"So, we're going to find a place, maybe in one of the dressing rooms."

"I don't think we'll be too disturbed."

Manager said: "That's fine. Take your time. We'll be nail-hammering and circular-sawing, but it's okay if you're around."

Boy said: "It's a difficult scene to get right."

"It must be hard."

"Everything else depends on it."

"All your future selves, I know. So: really: go!"

Girl and Boy self-consciously left the stage stage left, went up a couple stairs, and entered a dressing room.

Manager got back to her work. She was thinking about Boyfriend, and wondering why he wasn't there yet. Something could have happened, somewhere, somehow. There was no point in worrying about it.

Boy and Girl turned off the lights around the dressing room mirrors. A small lamp was to one side, only forty watts, and this they covered with a white piece of cloth. They had their books, but they didn't want to see them too carefully. They were supposed to know their lines by heart. They folded their pages back and clutched them. This wasn't a dry run. Luckily the dressing room was pretty small, so they had to be close together, which was what they were going to be when they were on the stage, albeit with two soft spots upon them. They got downstage, and she did her first line, and he replied with his felt reply. They skipped the part where she turns away, because that would take much more time to learn and to get right. They sounded like they were talking softly, but rather instead they were projecting to the back of the house. The scene lasted fifteen minutes, followed by curtain and applause and a reprise.

Manager had covered half the flat with glue water, moving the brush regularly from side to side with method born of experience. She was turning the flat around to conveniently repeat the process of the other half when accountant came in the back door and onto the stage set and through the empty door frame.

"Ah!" he cried. "The work goes on and on, does it not? Every time I come here, I see: progress, progress, progress!"

Manager stood up. Accountant was a good guy, somewhat older than the rest of the cast and crew. He was a real accountant in a firm downtown. Why he'd ever gotten implicated in community theatre was anyone's guess. "You here to pitch in?" Manager asked facetiously.

"Not quite, no. Not for this kind of work. Rather, I've come in to settle some accounts, check the ticket sales, etcetera etcetera. I'll be out in the box office, or rather in the little office behind it. I think I'll manage."

"I went in there the other day, and it's quite a mess. How do you find anything?"

"I have a method. I call it my archaeology. Things from yesterday are on top of piles; going down through the piles, we go to history more and more remote, until at the bottom of each pile is what we may call the origin story of this ensemble. As long as I don't mix up the pages, I can find anything according to its remoteness in time."

"You have a good eye for measurements."

Without saying another word, Accountant went through the house and into the lobby, where he unlocked a small door. He was in the little office, and he had his measuring implements with him, in his head.

Out on the stage, Manager was painting glue water onto a flat; she was past halfway though, and she recalled the measurements she was using: four feet by ten feet, building 1x3s which are actually .75x2.75s. She had never found out why they weren't the size they were advertised as being; she was sure Accountant would know, vowing then and there to ask him about it later in the day, even if she had hours to wait.

Accountant opened his account book and looked on the right hand side. The cost of the licence, the minimal cost involved in the rental of the theatre, which was minimal because the theatre wanted the business and both it and the amateur company had subsidies from various local, provincial, and federal agencies. He skipped over the other matter on that side of the page and looked to the other side. Of course, it was blank, since there was no revenue so far. However, he had another account book, a provisional account book, which contained the names of various parties to whom had been jobbed the task of actually selling tickets. It was to be a four-night run; he was pretty sure everything would turn out fine and they wouldn't lose too much money all in all.

The flat was completed, and all it had to do was dry. Manager carefully carried it down into the orchestra pit and laid it flat on the cement floor, intending to leave it there for three to four hours. (Little did she know!) She hopped back up onto the stage, still fit from all those high school athletics, and surveilled the stage. The fake mouldings on the SL walls had to be put in place. She went in search of the electric screwdriver and ran into Translator, who was in the hallway and writing something down in a notebook.

"Ah!" said Translator. "I didn't expect to be entirely alone, I suppose. There's some depth to that statement. I must keep it in mind."

"What are you here for?" asked Manager with some concern. Really, why was he here? Can't he do his translating elsewhere?

Translator said: "I have to translate Cocteau's programme notes into English. I think I can do it better when I have the sight of the stage within view. It is a very theatrical play, you know."

"Oh, yeah, special effects and so on."

"Not just that: it's the ironic positioning of things, the multivalence of each action and word. It would not work in any other medium, these ideas, so I have to see the stage."

"Sure, that's fine. I'm not your boss."

They were back on the stage by that point.

"I'll find a quiet spot at the back. You won't even know I'm here."

Translator went down the steps that were stage right. "I'll find the quietest place I can find."

He went up the right aisle, all the way to the back of the house. Manager could barely see him in the dimness. He called: "Oh, have you seen Boyfriend recently?"

Manager replied: "He's supposed to be here today, as in: now. Do you have any idea where he is?"

Translator had moved along the right row and he was now entirely invisible. "No. I owe him some money for an 18th century French-English dictionary. I have the money now. Can I leave it with you?"

"That's not necessary, because he's going to be here any minute."

"Ah, very well, very well."

"Can you see back there?"

"I use a little penlight. I put it behind my ear. See?" A little light then shone throughout the house, like a distant star. "It's just what I want to use," he continued.

"If it's fine with you, it's fine with me."

"I'm not even here, I'm not even here."

In his darkness, Translator read a French sentence, ordered its byzantine clausal constructions into what seemed best for English, which had its own clausal construction rules that weren't quite like the ones for French. The English version shone through the darkness, and he wrote down what he thought was the best make. From there, it was onto the next sentence, and the sentence after that one....

With the electric screwdriver, and for a moment thinking about Boyfriend, Manager dragged their stepladder over to the base of the fake wall. It was at that point that she heard someone coming through the back door. She was all ready to say: "Think of the devil!" when a stranger appeared. An older woman, in an orange dress and carrying a newspaper, had wandered in.

Manager called: "Can I help you?"

The stranger was looking around the space with interest. She said: "I was driving by, and I thought I'd look in. The door was open." Then, as if to herself: "They haven't changed it a bit, which is nice."

Manager asked: "You've been here before?"

"Oh, dear, darling, it's more than that. I designed this building, and had it built. My name is Architect."

"Wow! You built this place?"

"Yes, many years ago. Thirty-five? Something like that. Yes, thirty-five years ago. I expected it to last, but I thought they'd change it at least a little."

"The lobby has been changed. They re-did it about five years ago."

"Oh, I must see what they've done. Frankly, I didn't spend much time on the lobby. It was this theatre part that was my real joy. Don't you find the acoustics good?"

Even though Manager was some fifty feet away from Architect, and even though Architect was speaking in a plain voice, Manager had to remark: "Yes, they're very good, these acoustics."

"I had someone come all the way from Salzburg to verify. Very expensive, that."

Architect turned away, seeming to forget Manager altogether. She looked up high overhead, to the fly gallery, to the fly pit, and then down the ropes to the ropes' anchors. Because the set was in the way, she couldn't see the steps leading up to the dressing rooms, wherein Actor and Actress lay together, and her attention turned to the orchestra pit and the house. She decided to go for a stroll.

She went down the stage right steps, glancing at the time into the pit, remembering how she'd had to fight to get it a mere four inches lower. She went into the aisle, up to where, unseen by herself, Translator watched her pass. Out in the lobby, which was new and entirely unknown to her, she peeked into the box office only to see the back of Accountant who was studying his columns and rows. Up the stairs she went, to the balcony, and to the lighting booth, where she ran into Lighting. They greeted one another; "You must be Lighting. I'm Architect." "Pleased to meet you, Architect." "I built this building." "Yes, I heard you talking to Manager. And yes: really good acoustics."

Architect continued on her way, down some other stairs.

Meanwhile, Manager found some three-quarter inch screws and put them in the breast pocket of her shirt. She'd only need three screws for each moulding; there wasn't need for any more, and, besides, the flats didn't have the crossbeams for any more. After she'd drilled a couple starter holes, she heard another person coming in. Man, a lot of people were showing up! Well, they were due to open in nine or ten days, so it was to be expected.

She looked up to see Propsmistress come in. The latter had a couple plastic bags with her; the dollar store down the street had opened at eight. "Howdy, Manager," she called. She was certainly in a good mood. Propsmistress was without a doubt the most fashionable of their lot. Today she was kitted out in a striped knee-skirt and a bright blue blouse. She rattled the bags. "I got some more goodies for us! I've only got to find a long feather boa and a colonial Indian sword."

"You're doing well," said Manager. "Accountant is here, so you can submit your receipts."

"Yes, I'll do that. Working on mouldings, are we?"

"Slowly, yes. It's funny that none of the crew has shown up yet."

"Is Boyfriend here?"

"Actually, I'm still waiting for him to show. Any clues as to where he might be?"

"None at all; we don't travel in the same circles, you know."

Was that a dig?

"I'll have to get my prop-book and check it twice. I think I'm accurate, but you never know. That's the value of writing things down. Ever it has been so, ever since the first Neanderthal notched a branch to record the passage of time."

"I think Accountant was talking about the same thing a while ago."

"Oh, is that so?" Propsmistress looked down across the house to the back wall to where, on the other side, the box office was. "I suppose like minds think alike."

Still in her dreamy state, Propsmistress went further backstage, past various rooms and people, until she came to her props department. In this small room were most of the props for the play and some others that were just there in storage. She looked them over: a knife, a gun, a very big knife, two silver trays and eight silver goblets, six bundles made out to look like letters, two with ribbons and four without, galoshes, raincoats, a pointer stick, a laser pointer, feathers in a bag from a pillow, a portable telephone, many long feathers for nose-tickling, a box of condoms, a Sherlock Holmes pipe, and I could go on listing everything but instead I'm going to stop here. Suffice it to say: Propsmistress had gathered a lot of props for the performance, and for other performances.

Like the rest, she was in her early twenties. During the week she was a student at the local community college and she worked part time in a clothing store. She had dark green eyes and light brown hair with a hint of red under certain bulbs. She had Accountant on her mind. I mean, after all, it wouldn't be much of a theatrical experience without various activities happening off- and back-stage, now would it? Flirtations, break-ups, even weddings were to come at some future date: but when?

The work was continuing on the stage, and Manager was wondering where any of the stage crew were. Surely it was something like eleven o'clock, and there was no sign of anyone. Then she turned her mind to Boyfriend, who should have shown up by now certainly. She heard the rear door open, and waited to see a useful (to her) person: but no, it was Costumer, dressed perfectly as usual in a tan pantsuit and a ribbon in hair. She was carrying some dull-coloured clothes over her right arm. "Oh, hello," she said in her formal tone. "The work is continuing on all fronts, is it not?"

"Yes," said Manager: "You've got some work to do here?"

"Certainly; there's a lot of details to go through. Look at this." She held out the clothes: tan and plain overalls, and a grey cap. "It's for Gardener, and they're the proper size for our actor's walk-on part."

Manager fiddled with some screws absentmindedly as she said: "Freebies from somewhere?"

"No, I got them at Value Village. That's the place to go for almost everything. In any case, it's clearly the place to start."

Manager said: "So, is the Gardener going to show up for a fitting?"

"Yes, he should be here in a half-hour or so. I have to secure some buttons before he arrives. I'll be in the dressing room."

"One of them is occupied, so you'd best knock."

"Is there someone changing?"

"Yes, possibly into three."

Costumer nodded wisely and fell out of view of everyone, including herself. All she could see were the steps leading up to the first dressing room. She stopped, having ascended them, and listened at the women's dressing room. There wasn't a sound. She went up a few steps more and looked up a short flight of steps, to the men's dressing room, which was right over the women's. She heard a rustling, so yes, they were up there, having their ways with one another. Costumer returned to the women's, put the overalls down on a chair, and set to work.

He goal was to make stronger buttons. One never knew what could happen in one of these French tragical farces. Buttons could be pulled at any minute. She examined the ones on the overalls and decided that they could use some reinforcing.

From a basket she took up a spool of brown thread and a bun of needles. There's a word for that thing, that bun of needles, and it comes up in crosswords puzzles rather often. She chose a thick needle and then she found this light little aluminium metal disk the size of a nickel that had a loop of wire attached to it. One came across one a long time ago, and one hadn't the faintest idea what it was. Costumer pushed the metal loop through the eye of the needle, passed a thread through the loop, and pulled the loop out through the eye of the needle. And thus was the needle threaded. There must be a word for that aluminium thing.

Now another person came in the back door. Manager looked over from her perch on her ladder to see Maestro absentmindedly looking around the stage as if he'd never seen the likes before. He was dressed in his shabby grey suit and he had a bundle of large folio sheets in his hand. He saw Manager, placed her in his mind, and said: "Hello. I didn't expect anyone to be here."

"Actually, a lot of people are here," said Manager, without adding: "Only not the ones I want to be here."

"Ah!" said Maestro. "I have to do some corrections, and I thought this was the quietest place to do it. You see, our cor anglais player can't hit a particular note, so I'm transposing it down a tone. I hope it doesn't clash with the whole chromatic scheme of the score. Do you think it will?"

"I have no idea, since I don't know a thing about music."

"Ah!" He thought for a moment. "I suppose few do. Anyway, I'm going to plunk myself down in the pit and get to working on it. You see, there's a lot of accidentals in the sheets, and they really have to be taken care of. The listener might not be able to perceive the difference between a badly-written tone and a flubbed tone, but I have to take care that the basic points are correct. I want to be blamed where I should be blamed, and no place else."

He bowed majestically and gracefully.

Manager said: "I'm sure you'll be just about perfect."

"I thank you. Now I'm going into the pit to sit at my conductor's chair and work through all the staves I have to work through."

He went down into the pit, going over the edge rather than around and into it from either side; he lowered himself down some eight feet. He must have fallen the two remaining feet, figured Manager, though no-one other than Maestro ever knew.

He sat down on his stool and spread the score down to his left and some blank sheets down to his right. It was only one of the numbers he had to go through, number five to be precise, some music to be played during a change of scenery. The tune was from Richard Strauss, arranged by someone in the 1920s and published in Germany at the end of that decade. He marked clefs down the left-hand side of the right-hand side page. Counting on his fingers, he realized the key the transposition had to be in, and he marked it at the beginning of the first stave. The key would not change until the end of the piece, once the curtains had re-opened. Maestro figured he would put in the new key marking where it had to go. The musicians, if taught well, would know exactly when that moment had to be.

Manager got back to work. Where were they all? Boyfriend? Crew? They only had nine or ten days to get everything set.

She heard the door open again, for the ninth or tenth time. She stopped stock still and waited. It wasn't anyone she had met before, but she certainly knew who he was. It was Celebrity Success, actor and director and producer, the hero of the amateur theatre, the only one who some thirty years before had gone on, away from the very stage she was managing, and off to Hollywood. Yes, Celebrity Success had returned.

Manager got down off the ladder and went over to him. She barked: "Hi!" and tried not to look too stunned.

Celebrity said: "Oh, hello there. My name's Celebrity Success. I happened to be passing by, and I thought I'd look in."

Maestro twisted around to look at whatever was happening on the stage. Yes, it was Celebrity Success. Everyone in the world knew Celebrity Success.

Manager said to him, "Oh course, we know you here. People here talk about you all the time. So, you've come back to your humble roots, eh?"

"As I said, I was passing by."

"I've seen a lot of your movies."

Celebrity laughed. "I hope not all of them. Some turned out to be truly terrible."

"Yes, I know; no, not all of them."

Translator, in the back row, had gotten up and was walking down the aisle. Accountant was by then at the aisle entrance.

Celebrity was looking around, with a dazed expression. "It's just as I remember it, only a bit smaller."

"It's pretty much as you left it, though the front of the building is pretty different, the lobby and so on."

"Changed, is it? Well, that can't be helped. One can't leave 'shrines to one's magnificence' everywhere one goes, now can one? What's the production?"

"The Housekeeper's Generation."

Celebrity rubbed his chin. "I can't say I'm familiar with that one. I'm quite out of touch with the entire theatre world, you see. I got into making movies, and I could never get back to the stage."

Girl and Boy, along with Costumer, had all recognized the voice, and they had all come onto the stage.

"Back here," continued Celebrity, meaning the auditorium: "I had the best time of my life. Such people you meet in a theatre! Real individuals! In movies, everyone's all the same, all on the make, all trying to wheel-and-deal. There's no friendship to be had, none at all." He looked around. Accountant and Architect were in the house, and from the other direction Setbuilder and Propsmistress had appeared. Lighting was up in the balcony, at the edge.

Celebrity continued, suddenly enthusiastically: "But here: here is where things matter, where things count. Out there? Beyond these walls? If you have any hopes for the future, know that fortune will sneak in at the edge and tear it apart. Something will go wrong, as it has gone wrong with me. Try not to leave; childhood is wonderful, and adulthood is dreadful. Stay right here, in this present moment, in this theatre, and never leave it."

Lighting japed: "We'll get hungry soon enough, sir."

Celebrity looked up to the balcony. He thought for a bit, then continued: "You're right. There's no way out of it after all. You'll leave, and you'll get into other, disappointing, things. All you'll have of any worth will be memories.

"And no-one is to blame in any of it. You can't know a thing about it, really. In any case, stay. Stay with your acts, as long as you can."

Everyone was quiet for a moment, then they started thinking about what they had been doing, before they'd been interrupted. Still no sign of Boyfriend.